The Blog of Mark Shields - Mark Shieldshttp://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/Wed, 06 Sep 2017 06:51:51 +0000en-GBSite-Server v6.0.0-11928-11928 (http://www.squarespace.com)Patreon for the Monday GraveyardMark ShieldsWed, 06 Sep 2017 07:03:43 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/9/6/patreon-for-the-monday-graveyard537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:59af9b07e45a7cada37d559fI've been presenting a podcast/radio show for the past three and a half years or so, and it's managed to reach 133 episodes in that time. I've got big plans for the future of the show, and even if you're not an avid listener, but a supporter of this blog, you could maybe pledge $1 an episode.

What is Patreon?

Patreon is a site that allows creators to be supported directly for their creation. In my case it's the podcast, which takes up a few hours each week and is hosted wonderfully on Mixcloud and here, on my blog. That in of it's self has been enough, but I want to expand the show a bit and move it into more ambitious circles. That's the goal of Patreon.

It is a platform (ugh, I hate that word, but it is better than "website") that gives me the chance to gather Patrons of the show, those who pledge to commit money to the show per week, and in turn get rewards back on top of the main show.

The Main Show will ALWAYS be free and available on the Mixcloud feed, this very site, and any other podcast apps.

But if you support the show, there are some cool perk to be had.

Why?

Well, as i said, I have some ambitions for the show, namely four of them really;

Upload all the past shows to the podcast feed, and get it into iTunes.

Expand the scope of the show to include new community aspects and a revitalised MG Mailer

Return to doing the normal vocal voice shows, as before

Invest in something called the MG24 - a 24/7 stream of all shows released chronologically

Some of these are further away than others; the MG24 is something that needs quite a bit of time and investment into, but number 2 is a good one; and it'll be starting next week.

How?

The place to be is Patreon. Sign up there and you can see the "tiers" of payments and the rewards within. The one most people are interested in is the $5 teir for some reason; it unlocks two versions of the show, a non-vocal remix and the full voice show.

And if you can't that's fine; just listening is support enough. I am under to illusions; this is an experiment to see where the show can go and who can come along for the ride. You should come along too, if you want - even if you're not an avid listener.

The rewards are thus:

Graveyarder - $1 or more per epsiode of the show (weekly, at most) ∙ 0 patrons

Sneak peek of upcoming show

Shout out on the website as backer and in the show

Access to the Patron-only feed

Gorgeous Graveyarder - $3 or more per epsiode of the show (weekly, at most) ∙ 0 patrons

Access to patron-only content including out takes and tracks not played

Sneak peek of upcoming episodes

Email list for exclusive insight into the show

Shout out on the website as backer and in the show

Full Graveyarder - $5 or more per epsiode of the show (weekly, at most) ∙ 1 patron

Your own exclusive artwork

Suggest theme or songs for a show

Access to a new voice-free mix of the show

Plus all previous rewards

Producer Graveyarder - $30 or more per epsiode of the show (weekly, at most) ∙ 0 of 5 patrons

You can do a full show of your own music or own selection produced by me

Plus all previous rewards

]]>The Return of Gaming: The Nintendo SwitchMark ShieldsThu, 31 Aug 2017 10:25:29 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/8/31/the-return-of-gaming-the-nintendo-switch537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:59a7df93c534a555b49c7527In 2012 I wrote a series of posts that chronicled my favourite computer games "of all time". The reason I suggested at the time was that I was "over" gaming - my reasons were laid out in the first part of that series:

"...but the most important of all is that I don’t like the games being made anymore. They are not what I want to play, and not what I want to spend my money on, and as such I’ve fallen out of the loop. Also, the idea that games can only be played on one type of machine by one manufacturer doesn’t wash any more, and that’s annoying more than anything."

I thought to myself that I was over it. It had become a thing from my past. The games that were selling millions weren't my cup of tea, and the last really awesome game I enjoyed, Mass Effect 3, had soured everything about the series. Not even the promise of new Sonic games, new Shenmue games, or new Mass Effect games could get me interested in the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Nothing was even remotely what I wanted - a console wedded to my television that I can't take with me seemed so backwards and... last century, it put me off dropping money on a system I knew wasn't right.

Then Nintendo announced the Switch. I bought a Wii back when everyone was buying Wiis and I was so critical of it only a few months afterwards - my blog post about it is, naturally, amusing reading, with all the over-wrought drama of someone exaggerating their ill-will towards something that they actually feel remorse about buying. Notice that I actually bought a Nintendo Wii on launch day (with Colin, who was buying one as part of this 21st birthday that all of us, his friends, had chipped in on) and promptly sold it to a close friend and his then-boyfriend. I regretted it a bit, but later didn't.

Nintendo replaced the Wii with the Wii U, a catastrophically poorly performing console with umpteen issues. I was interested in the Gamepad idea, but it was poorly built and poorly executed, feeling more like a Mega Drive 32X add-on rather than an all-new console.

The Switch, however, is totally different. It fits the bill perfectly. It plays the games I want - that new Sonic game I mentioned, plus Mario Kart, a favourite of Con's, as well as a host of other cool games. It also is portable. Like, really portable. It's basically a portable console that plugs into your telly. It's fucking awesome.

And then when the TV's free, I can hook it up and be ready to go. It's unlikely that, in my current life, that hours of hours of play sessions are on the cards, but playing the console when historically I've been dicking around on Twitter or Instagram is much more interesting - the Switch slots into my current life style fairly well.

So we will see how it pans out in the long run, but the ability to take the games away to play where I want to is exactly one of the criticisms I made at the current generation of consoles five years ago - I might not have said portability, but I was certainly thinking that "one machine one manufacturer" limits it to one TV. I'm not sure I'm fully back, but it's nice to be a consumer and have one of my wishes fulfilled.

]]>Floods in HoustonMark ShieldsWed, 30 Aug 2017 07:51:18 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/8/30/floods-in-houston537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:59a669bd37c5810de9f4f2feWhen I first moved to Houston the first thing that really got me worried was the pamphlet laid out on the kitchen counter top that was blue and had nice wee swirly symbols on it, hidden under the leasing agents stuff about the keys and rules of the pool. I saw it the morning after I arrived, jet lagged and confused, drinking a coffee from the simple rations that the company had left in my cupboards, as I wondered what I was doing living in the States.

The pamphlet was "Hurricane Preparedness" and gave an overview of what to do if there was a hurricane and a mass evacuation. I mentioned this on Monday to my new coworkers and whom had looked after the previous exchanges, and they spoke about the earlier year, 2008, in hushed tones - Hurricane Ike had made landfall as a Cat 2 storm a few days after the exchanges had arrived and had put the windows in on their then apartment, as well has taking out the offices a bit as well.

I wondered aloud if there was a chance it'd happen in 2010, the year I was there, and they said yes - normally they come in two-year cycles, and 2008 was the last one, so 2010 was likely to have one.

A few weeks after I arrived in Texas, a huge storm did swoop in and I was glued to my television. The storm, Tropical Storm Hermine, dropped a lot of water on the city. I blogged about it here, with a video soundtracked to the most wistful Boards of Canada (that you should watch) I could muster, shows my complete astonishment at the amount of water thundering down onto my apartment. In the video, I comment how they had forecast for the storm 8 to 10 inches of rain, which was unreal.

Houston this past weekend has had around 50 inches in 48 hours.

The fallout from Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey is quite incredible. I've made contact with friends who live there who are all okay thankfully, and those who are sharing on social media and as bewildered as you could imagine they can be. This isn't a small city, nor a small area, this is a city that is larger that some States with a population larger than that of the central belt of Scotland, and is an important cultural, commercial and engineering hub for almost all the US. Houston is a city that gets unnoticed by most from the UK, being "Texan" for better or worse, and ignored compared to the East and West coastal cities, but as somewhere I lived with Connie it's extremely close to our hearts and always will be, and to see it devastated quite literally is heart breaking.

The waters are yet to recede so we don't know the true extent of the damage, but it can only be assumed to be utterly disastrous. The area Con and I lived in, Eldridge Parkway, was under three feet of water, being right next to Buffalo Bayou and five minutes from the Barker Reservoir. We walked along the Bayou, sunned in the park, and it really feels strange to see it under water. What is even odder is that I randomly came across a video on Twitter of the flooding and recognised the street instantly, with shock.

With the flooding in Cockermouth in 2015 and Houston it really does bring home the change in climate that is happening - but the saddest thing is that it does the opposite for others. I hope that the recovery for the city is swift and strong - I know it will be, Texas is a strong state. Texas strong, indeed.

]]>Car SeatsMark ShieldsMon, 07 Aug 2017 10:23:46 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/8/7/car-seats537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:59883777e6f2e12ff533743fWhen I was younger there was very few bigger thrills than getting to sit in the front passenger seat. I remember the thrill of getting to be up front, and be right at the drivers area, and loved seeing all the buttons. One of my pet loves was the hazard lights for some reason, and regularly I'd pop them on even when the car was parked in a car park, much to annoyance of my Mum and Dad.

One of the perks of being four years older than my sister was that when we drove to Blackpool or Alton Towers for a few family holidays I remember gettting upgraded to front-seat passenger status, with my Mum accompanying Lynn in the back. These memories are as strong as these early childhood memories get.

They cannot happen today with my children however. The rules on car seats and safety in-car has totally changed, and a child in the front passenger seat is just simply not the normal state of affairs in the UK, and is entirely frowned upon in Canada. This shift in in-car sfatey has saved so many lives across the world, from adult drivers and seat belts, to the car seats we now spend hundreds of pounds on everytime you have a child.

It is impossible to begrudge the cost of these car seats as they are nessecary - driving is the least safe mode of transport for any journey and putting the most precisou cargo in the world in your eyes into a metal box drving 50mph towards other metal boxes. My Dad said, just before Joni was born, that there would be no more focused drive than the one where you bring your new born child home from the hospital, and he was absolutely right - I've never drove that intently and only once since, with Etta's home journey, which was on a back road in the middle of November at 9pm at night in the rain. A nervy drive.

The car seats that Connie and I use are both Maxi-Cost models; the CabrioFix for Etta and for Joni the 2wayPearl, both with their respective bases. In total, the cost of both has been near to £700 all-in, and they are absolutely great bar a few foibles with Joni's newer one. The interesting thing is that going to Canada brings into sharp contrast just how good these car seats are.

If you've never driven your children in North America (and if you don't have kids) then you won't have came across the difficult to navigate issue out of EU car seats and travelling. In Canada we are lucky that our family have access to older used car seats, but the thing that Connie and I forget is the disparity in the perceived quality of the car seats.

In North America the seats still have the bolted anchor points - known as IsoFix points - in the cars but the car seats attach them differently. Instead of solid bars that ratchet onto them, it uses straps and seat belt fixings to attach securly to the car. In the case of Joni's, an additional top-tether is used. Unlike the EU seats, there are no front bars that attach to the floor. This means that we are having to deal with seats that we are unsure of.

There are a few other changes - the belt buckles are different too, with the EU ones aeasier to click together and also to remove if there is an emergency. In North America a chest buckle clicks together the two shoulder straps, which is pretty damn uncomfortable for Joni and Etta, and required some relearning from myself when putting them into the seats. The chest buckle is the oddest part of the difference in the car seats in reality.

The thing is that it only serves to give Connie and I pause - we prefer the EU car seats, as they feel easier to fit securely and more sturdy - a great example is that the official advice for the car seat in Canada is to put a towe underneath it to provide a better "titl" for Etta, which is hard to believe is safe - but we can't complain, as the car seats are still officially safe.

]]>Rollercoaster LegacyMark ShieldsThu, 27 Jul 2017 06:49:05 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/7/27/rollercoaster-legacy537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:59798711579fb3cca0a54d06Joni turns three years old in a few weeks.

Ever since my slight obsession with Rollercoasters started in 1999 I have been forcing friends to come along to ride them with me. As a teenager I arranged for a bus day trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach with five other friends that coralled two friends who didn't like rollercoasters to come along, and managed to convince a friend's father to pick us all up at 5am, an ungodly time of the day for a teenager. Later, Colin then I drove from Glasgow to Alton Towers and back with friends to go and ride the rides, two trips that sit as easily the most memorable moments of my teenage-hood. On the trip back when I was driving we came across a massive car accident on the M74 around Junction 15 that killed four people and gives me shivers every single time I drive past that point.

What I am trying to paint is that over time I've forced friends to come with me in my pursuit of rollercoaster fun. I regret not forcing friends to go to Magic Mountain in LA back in 2011, but I think that would have been a stretch too far. Ever since I became a father though I've eyed a holiday to a theme park as a goal that would later become a place to ride rides with my brood. Connie has various positions on rollercoasters; she used to ride them, but is unsure if she'd enjoy the rides as an adult, and that I can respect - even I had to pause when Colin and I went to Blackpool a few years back and I saw the height of the Big One from the rational mind that I now have as an adult.

Joni is now three basically and we went to a small family theme park in Bracebridge towards the end of the holiday called Santa's Village, themed around the fact it's Santa's summer home and southern branch office - and who wouldn't want to holiday is the Muskoka Lakes? The park is aimed squarely at the 3 to 10 demographic, the tallest and most thrilling rides being a 30ft ferris wheel themed to christmas baubles and a brand new spinning rollercoaster called the Peppermint Penguim Coaster that probably reaches a max speed of around 30mph.

My fear was that Joni wouldn't enjoy it at all - Connie had been there a few weeks earlier and said Joni had had a blast, but had postponed Joni's first rollercoaster ride until I was there, a gesture of sheer love and affection for my obessions that only my wife can truly understand and only I will truly understand how it made me feel. I was nervous that introducing Joni to a "big" ride, and worried it would put her off for life if it scared her shitless. Luckily, she actually, like her old man, loves being scared shitless. She's a wee adrenaline junkie and had no fear on any of the rides. The spinning rollercoaster was the only ride who had a minimum height restriction due to the over the shoulder restraints (OTSRs in technical lingo) and she was pissed off that she couldn't ride it - and despite it's diminutive size it packed a punch.

My memories of rollercoasters as a kid are great - I remember the Zipper Dipper at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, now known as Blue Streak in the Nickelodeonland area, a part of the park Joni would love. I also distincly remember, aged 9, refusing to go on Nemesis the year it opened at Alton Towers, and then again refusing in 1997 when they were building Oblivion, my dad going alone on the ride as we all waited. I remember going on the Big Dipper for the first time and realising how even the smaller rides can kick your arse (a fact I neglected to remember when I implored Colin and I to ride in the back row on our first ride at the park a few years ago, and it gave me a fright). I also remember going to Pac Asterix and riding the horrendous head banging mess that was the seven-looping Goudrix with my dad, who just shook his head afterwards, before we found the incredible Tonnerre de Zeus (still ym favourite rollercoaster of all time, actually) and rode it as the last thing before we left the park.

The fact that Joni and Etta, and Connie too, might join me on these rides in the future excites me - not just for bonding and the fun we might have, but the possible future of travelling in the North East of the US and Canada to places that have rides that are truly terrifiying, rides that I might not go on if it were just me - I realised that Cedar Point, home to some of the most famous rides on the planet, is only seven hours drive from Connie's home town whilst writing this post. If I'm to keep up appearances to my daughter or daughters, I will have no choice but to grin and bear the huge drops and racing speeds.

The NHS, in it's wisdom, actually took it a little more seriously. Not surprising thinking back though - the Oil and Gas medical was worried about the loss of hearing at work, not the loss of hearing I've always had. The NHS made a decision to check me a little more thoroughly and then asked me if I'd thought about a hearing aid. I hadn't seriously thought about it, so I said I was interested.

A few months later and this past Thursday I went to the hospital and within 20 minutes was fitted out with my very first hearing aid and I'll tell you something right away - why didn't I ask about this sooner?

The key difference I've noticed is that my brain is struggling to recalibrate the difference in the sound. The quality of the hearing aid is pretty poor from a fidelity side - I'd imagine HD 24bit audio isn't really needed when the other side of it is zero hearing anyway. But what surprised me the most was the feeling of a slight delay behind the sound, like when you have a microphone transmitting to a speaker in the same room (like a baby monitor) - it is milliseconds, but the brain notices and is slowly working out how to correct for it.

But the magic thing is that within 48 hours I'd discovered I'd become so used to it taking it out at night before going to bed was like filling my left ear back up with gum. The dull and far away sounds that I got from the non-aid-filled ear was startling, and that the effect that the hearing aid has on my hearing is quite something. A friend "jumped" me at the local shop car park jovially only to discover the reason I almost karate chopped his head off in fright was that he'd used the amplified side to sneak on. The car makes new rumbling noises - Frank's barking is louder too. And the road we live beside is suddenly a bit of a nusiance rather than a little dull rumble in the background.

The Doctor applying the hearing aid asked if I was "ready" to wear one; Connie too had asked me as well, to see if there were any reservations with adding one to my ear. I hadn't thought about it really, but the fact remained that I'd always assumed that I'd need one, just not maybe when I was 31 years old. I guess it is like glasses - the idea of wearing them is fine until you actually realise that you have to wear them all the time. At least with glassess in most cases contacts can replace the glasses, and in severe cases laser treatment can fix your sight for a good chunk of time.

The hearing loss is not like that - there is a surgical procedure that the NHS used to carry out, but compared to the hearing aid it's incredibly high risk (you can lose all hearing entirely) and obviously far more expensive. So the realisation is that this isn't temporary, or a choice that I'll just put on going to work; this is a permanent change to my life and one that needed to have improved life benefits to make worthwhile. I'm not going to chop and change my hearing aid on a hourly basis to just suit my life - I'm wedded to it like I am to my very own body now, and looking back I slightly regret not going sooner and speaking to them about it. That being said, even though there is a permanency to this all, I am not worried about the rest of my life with one (or two, knowing how bad my right ear is now and the projected path that it will take).

Friends and family won't quite realise the importance of this, nor will the lay person, but for me this might be one of the most significant things to have happened in my life. Finally, after years, I might be able to hear properly (or at least better) and it can only get better over time as my brain adjusts and I get more used to it.

It's nice to be able to hear again. Or maybe, hear for the first time?

]]>The Numbers or the Right MethodMark ShieldsWed, 31 May 2017 08:00:39 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/5/31/the-numbers-or-the-right-method537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:592e74ea893fc0e042b74949A lesson I learned from my English tutor was one that I could have done with at the start of my adolescent exam career was this - they don't really care about the answer, but mostly about the demonstration of the method. I was told, for example, if a question had six marks for it five of them were for the working, and one for the right answer. If you know how to do it, show that, or show as much as you can, and then move on.

Note: this might not be the case anymore; I'm 20 years out of doing exams like that, so don't take this as advice - I am not liable for getting fails on your current exams.

Note 2: Joni and Etta will not be getting this advice.

This later bred into me a contempt for the memorising of the formulas that was needed for many exams. Later on, they would give us the formulas, but not the method, and that made more sense to me. This pervasive idea carried through to the University exams I hated with every single breath. Getting the "wrong" answer was way down in the priority list, and instead was the idea that you knew what to do and you'd at least payed a modicum of attention to the class.

This might have been my downfall in my only open book exam, where most of the year failed, but that's just me make excuses for the worst exam mark in my history.

I am reminded of this when hearing of the recent gaffes by Labour politicians. They get the numbers wrong - endless streams of numbers too, some dealt with more accuracy than others - and the spotlight the media then plays on these apparently disastrous mistakes. You can't remember how much money something's going to cost? Then let's set fire to you and your entire policy, never mind the fact that the alternative is a mortar launched at the heart of the welfare state.

It makes headlines and creates column inches/pixels and today that might all be that counts, but at the heart of the Election is a weird media in two minds about how to report it.

I am constantly reminded of the advice of my tutor; if there are three marks, split your answer into three separate sections, even if you think you can only answer two. Then, maybe, the marker will see the three ideas separate even if you're just rephrasing the same idea. This methodology probably got me my B in English, an upgrade from the fail I'd got in the prelim a few months earlier. When I hear answers that feature soundbites and manifesto waffle, I think that's what they are doing - I'll speak for a bit, maybe say some words, and then that's yer lot. On the recent debate, a questioner asked what is going to happen to the £350 million from the NHS we were promised - May's answer was that it was just a basic campaign bit and who cares, but it was structured like a real answer, and the questioner thought it was a good answer - the moderator was astonished.

I loved to manage to "cheat" - my favourite example being the realisation that in a maths exam the "simplified" form would always give the same answer as the long form of the same equation, meaning I could work out which one was the right multiple choice answer without doing any of the work - welcome to the 2017 General Election, where the Numbers are apparently more important than the Method.

]]>Children's Television Part I - The Thunderbirds BlueprintMark ShieldsFri, 19 May 2017 08:27:14 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/5/19/childrens-television-part-i-the-thunderbirds-blueprint537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:591ea949197aea51374db3a6A while back I wrote about how we were trying to keep Joni away from using television. That was a good idea, and still to this day we feel that a reduction in television is a good idea, but any one who is the parent of a toddler, or a parent of two or more kids, knows that TV is a necessary evil to get stuff done. And, additionally, Joni does enoy it, and it has sparked her imagination in quite a few ways. Obviously, there are limits, but sometimes there are days where you can do nothing but let her watch a bit of TV.

Whilst watching TV a few realisations come to mind, all of which are thought provoking. One trend in Children's TV I have noticed is the trend to make almost all shows about a group of characters doing things to save other characters - I call this The Thunderbirds Blueprint.

Of course, this idea of a group of characters saving people wasn't invented by Gerry Anderson and his puppet, nay marination, style of television show. In fact, it is the tenant of all major TV shows for kids; Mutant Hero Turtles, Transformers and Thundercats, mainstays of the 80s child's nostalgia (though, oddly, not really mine) are all of the same design. But look at almost every show these days, it is hard to not see the parallels with Thunderbirds, or for that matter, Captain Scarlet, or even Stingray.

The blueprint is simple; a few characters (four is the minimum, it seems) are based on a type of home, and have missions dolled out to them by a wiser and older mentor. This applies to PAW Patrol, Octonauts, Go Jetters... even the more modern reboot of Postman Pat, where he works as a Special Delivery team member. The other major component is the need for a range of vehicles - the trucks in PAW Patrol, the GUP-(x) machines in Octonauts, and Pat's endless array of helicopters, hovercrafts, turcks and jeeps getting his parcels to the apparently rich as hell residents of Greendale.

The other part of the shows that match is the repeatability; the pups rattle off the same catchphrases each time, as is the copy and paste presentation of the run-out of the Lookout, in the same way that each Thunderbird had their own launching mechanism, or that each Captain colour had his own little vignette explaining who they were. It means that a chunk of the running time can be padded, but also that children are drilled into the phrases and they will want to act them all out.

The reason for this is quite simple; it is easily marketed as toys; the Lookout might as well be the Tracy Island of my childhood, one my mum made for my from Paper Mache, incredibly. The toys are endless, as were the Thunderbirds toys - I had 1, 2 3 and 4, just not 5 (who wants a Space Station anyway). Joni has a Marshall and Rocky truck, and a Skye figurine, but doesn't yet want the rest of the troupe, which is lucky.

Even the shows that have lasted over time have evolved into it; Thomas the Tank Engine, now known as Thomas and Friends, has something called the Steam Team, who are basically the Thunderbirds of the Island of Sodor. Fireman Sam too has eveolved into a ghaslty CGI abomination, but it has shades of the same influences.

This isn't a criticism either - the format allows for bite sized lessons on being good and helping out people, and defeating the bad guy. Some do this better; Paw Patrol and Octonauts get away without needing a real villain (at least until PAW Patrol introduced Mayor Humdinger and the Catastrophe Kitties as doppelgangers), whilst Go Jetters manage to make their Dr Robotnik style villain essentially pointless when they both randomly turn up at the same international landmarks without so much as an explanation for the coincidence. Octonauts teaches stuff about sealife, and Go Jetters geography, so the framing works.

If you've read all this and you've never seen any of these shows, good for you. Well done. Either you've had kids and you're stronger than we are, or you've yet to have kids and boy - you've got a lot to look forward to.

]]>The Screaming Car CrashMark ShieldsThu, 18 May 2017 11:36:47 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/5/18/the-screaming-car-crash537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:591d875a3a0411cffe93707dI've not had the unfortunate experience of a major car accident in my adult life - only once, when I was very young - and I hope to goodness it never does happen. I do imagine though that when in one you probably scream, swear, or maybe make a noise not heard before. You'll make the noise anyway, right? Involuntary response to peril and or disaster.

I feel like blogging about the General Election is like that - a loud long scream that has nothing to do with what is about to happen and will make no difference to the end of the event. I can scream louder and harder, but the car will always already be crashing, and here I can write hundreds and thousands of words but there will still be a majority Conservative government at the end of the election.

It is fucking depressing.

The Tories are gutting the NHS in England and by consequence also doing it in Scotland. They then spin it as an NHS in Crisis, not an NHS Underfunded.

The Tories are cutting free school lunches, essentially removing one meal from kids a day, under the impression it's "up to the parents". That's demonstrably bullshit and can only hurt the children who need or even want those meals, under the guise of "parents taking control of their children's eating".

They are refusing to raise tax rates on people who can easily afford a rise.

They want to kill migration entirely, which will destroy any economical boost and growth.

They are going ahead with the hardest of heard Brexits because... they can? Who knows.

And if you vote Tory your a person I don't want to know. I can't talk to you. I can't see eye to eye with you. I don't understand how you want the country to work. If you want the NHS to end, I wish the worst of all illnesses on you. If you want children to starve and food banks to become the norm, I hate you.

And if you can't see that the country is destroying its self, I can't help you.

I am not saying Labour is the way to vote, nor Lib Dem. I don't have a clue how to vote - all parties in my local area are against things I am for, even the ones I have policies I do like (Labour's ruling out a Scottish Independence Referendum is a sticking point on an otherwise pretty interesting proposal).

So I am screaming - at the TV, at Twitter, at friends - and there is nothing that can be done. The UK is a shadow of the progressive country I thought it once was, a frightened scared inward looking retreating power, scared of a world it has been told not to understand by a media who just doesn't care.

As night follows day, a new phone follows the old one. At present I still have my venerable Nexus 6P but it's days are most certainly numbered. I wish this wasn't the case too - the Nexus is one of the best phones I've ever used, nevermind owned, and I really love every single major aspect of it bar one significant one. So it' a shame to see it go down in fame as easily the mot annoying phone I've ever owned. It is a damn shame to see it's reign as my daily-driver come to a ignomious end, but that's the cut throat world of being my main power device, one on which all Monday Graveyard admin takes place, all photos of my kids are taken on, and the one that keeps me in contact with all my friends across all corners of the world.

And it has came down to the same reason that I got the 6P in the first place - the battery.

I re-read my Nexus 6P review with an eye to do a re-review, which doesn't really need to happen - I love everything about it but the battery - and the last line of one section stood out like a sore thumb.

Time will tell if the Nexus 6P is better than that – surely, it can’t be worse than the HTC…

Well I can confirm that the 6P was indeed worse than the HTC. At least the HTC just drained - the issue I have with the 6P is that it just runs out battery whenever it feels like it. It'll be fnie throughout the day and then, at somepoint, it'll decide, somewhere between 60% and 15% that it has had enough and it just switches off, as if it has ran out. Then when you turn it back on it'll start charging... from the place that it was last at.

This graph is taken from the battery management part of the settings and accurately shows a normal day. That first drop is probably jusy before bed. The lonig flat line is me asleep, and then waking with Etta or Joni. Then, once the hpone is being used for reading the news it just seeps away like sand through your fingers. Then, around 25% it switches off. Then there's a gap and then I start charging - but from above 50% some how. Then it drops off at the usual rate, before dying at around 40% this time. It is immediately put on the charger and then drops as per usual, with my over the night adding it to varius chargers to make sure that it at least keeps power.

I have fast charging which is great, but if you look at the rate of change the fast charging is barely faster than the rate at which it's drops off under normal use. The final little blip had it - seriously - switch off and say it was dead... whilst it was on the power charger. Unreal.

Anyway, that's why the phone is getting tossed. It's done for - useless beyond 12pm in th afternoon - and once, this week, at before 9am.

What is next? Well, we'll just have to see now, won't we?

]]>The Undeserved RetaliationMark ShieldsFri, 05 May 2017 11:41:34 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/5/5/the-undeserved-retaliation537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:590c5b629de4bb09009fee52Frank has been a member of our family since July 2012. He is five years old in a month's time and is a key member of the team - Joni loves playing with him and Etta is a big fan of grabbing his whiskers if he sits too close to her Exersaucer. It's fun to see him grow older and in theory wiser, but also we know that in recent months he's been at the bottom of the pile.

Getting him walked hasn't been the easiest, what with Etta's sleeping patterns being like a 26 sided die, and the weather simply being too poor. Plus, getting out for a "big" walk is a big task and only recently is getting easier, thanks to the weather of course, but also a big push from ourselves in the right direction.

This long preamble is to explain that Frank is rarely walked around our local area for any serious length of time. If he's walked, he'll be taken away with the team. Or, it'll be in the daylight with the girls up and along to the school. Nothing major - indeed, in recent weeks his paws have been burned up by the rough stones on our patio, and he hasn't been out as much as before.

So when someone smeared dogshit all over our car and left a threatening note regarding our lack of picking his mess up, it came as a shock.

Connie and find dogshit on the pavements and paths utterly abhorrent. It's a part of owning a dog in the 21st century that is so ingrained I can't believe anyone in their right mind would do it. If Frank even takes a dump 100ft into a forest's trees way from the path I am in pains to go and pick it up. I take bags out with me everywhere. Family members gift us bags monthly, because we use them all the time. To firstly be accused of not doing it is galling enough, but to be threatened is a different story.

I'm not going to post the picture I have of the dogshit. I'll spare you.

The thing that upsets us the most about it isn't the unfounded nature of it - people can be notoriously petty about things like this and the childish thing to do is write a note without any method of recourse. What is upsetting is the targeting of us, the wrong people. What I mean is that this has to be a build up of someone doing something wrong for months on end and finally the person snaps and decides to do something about it, albeit to the wrong people. That's the biggest problem really; we aren't doing anything wrong, and therefore can't enact change, meaning that the person will continue to do it at their leisure and as such, we might get targetting again for nothing having changed. It's a logical flaw that when I spoke to the Police about it they fully understood our concerns.

And the involvement of the Police should really be the end of it. I don't want there to be any further instalments in the shit-campaign.

However I also messaged the Parish Council here where we live. I thought it prudent to let them know there is a bad no-good person doing things like this, and they posted a thing on Facebook explaining what had happened. Rightly, they left out the details of who it was, but also left out the detail that it was a wrongly targeted attack. This, I should have foreseen to be honest. I should have also foreseen the responses.

There have been five comments on the post, not bad engagement and something I'd kill for for the Monday Graveyard.

HOLD ON A MINUTE. I thought you deleted your Facebook?Yes, quite. Well, there is a large new pipeline going in across the street and I reactivated to have a chat with the Council, who use Facebook as their means of communication.Fine, i'll let it slide.

The responses were mirthless. One said "next time it'll go through the letter box", which I found amusing considering the Police are involved and I could send that off to them. Another also bemoaned the local area's problems with dogshit (which there is a serious problem, one I despise and constant moan about to Con) and that this escalation was almost warranted.

Another said that the event was "unacceptable" but then said that the offender should have been approached, which I totally agree with.

the most hilarious thing about those posts is the fact that the community has around 130 houses, and most are families or family linked house holds. Joni and Etta attend the area's children's groups. We know one of the persons who has commented about it. That was bound to happen.

The Parish have now bought new dog bins and willbe making new inroads into enforcement. Ironically, as the weather gets better we are less likely to now use our local roads. Frank likes hills and water over concrete and tarmac.

]]>The Unexpected ElectionMark ShieldsTue, 25 Apr 2017 12:21:55 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/4/25/the-unexpected-election537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:58ff3c25d2b8575ffc4bb3c6When we moved to Cumbria in the middle of 2015 there had just been a general election. I had noted at the time that living in England and having voted and supported the SNP was an odd mix, especially when they directly affected things that I might have been in favour of. This was to be last general election for five years we were constantly told, thanks to a bit of legislation.

In the truth of the matter it comes as no surprise that I hadn't really considered who I'd vote for if there was another one anytime soon. In the three elections since I have been of voting age (2005, aged 19, 2010 aged 24, and 2015 aged 29) I had voted in order Labour, Liberal Democrat, and then the SNP. My evolution of my voting intentions followed directly the maturation of my own personal politics, and in 2014 and then 2015 I supported the SNP. Laterly, I also still supported them in 2016 but didn't get to vote, because I lived in England. Interestingly, in 2011 I didn't vote - living in Texas - and in early 2012 I vote Green Party in the council elections.

So how the hell am I supposed to vote now, in England? I had only recently started looking into the election stuff for the May 4th stuff that is coming up, and now I have to totally sift my thought process away from the usual Westminster thoughts of Scotland and now, as part of the part of country that decides the next UK Prime Minister (that's because England gets more votes than Scotland, obviously) and Scotland has very rarely voted for the Tory governments that they have had.

The truth is I don't really know in all honesty. I have to dissaociate the Labour of England apart from the haphazard bullshittery of the Scottish Labour party, who are more inept than actually dangerous. It goes without saying there is no way I am voting Tory - you know, the Union suporting, Brexit wreaking, lying upperclass shysters that they are. I could vote Green, if there is a candidate. But the truth is that, for the first time, tactical voting has to be considered. If you think about the UK system, it is winner takes all, first past the post, and that means that if I want to stop the Tories I need to pick the next party that will probably get the most votes, and that's absolutely Labour, as the sitting MP is Labour.

This is a problem as there are lots of things about Labour I realy don't agree with. In fact, a lot. So what to do then? Vote to "Stop the Tories" or vote for the party I might agree with the most (which is possibly the Labour party, but also many others). It's a connundrum I never thought about before - knowing that your vote in Scotland is very unlikely to selecting the next Prime Minister (and, unlike many people would have you believe, not stopping someone rom winning, with the old truth that Labour need Scotland to win and that it cost them the election last time being untrue) it frees you a bit to truly choose who you might think does the best locally.

I really have to think about it.

As a side note, it is hard to understand why someone like Jeremy Corbyn voted for the early election - he could have said No, and then let May sweat it out or self-immolate in the Commons. Instead he voted to let them off the hook, for fear of looking like he was running from an election. The point of the law that the Tories enacted themselves was to stop this kind of stuff outright anyway. It's madness.

And as an another side note, it is impressive to see the media spinning up the narrative that any number of seats less than the current SNP total of 54 (56 won in 2015) will not only be a "lost election", but a setback in the terms of the IndyRef 2 they've already voted in the Scottish Parliament. I'm looking to see how that goes, but it already seems like the Tories will "win" with 18% of the seats that the SNP currently have. Watch that carefully.

]]>The Long AbsenceMark ShieldsMon, 24 Apr 2017 15:59:10 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/4/24/the-long-absence537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:58fe1f9fc534a56ca63ba569As I posted on the 20th March, I have been off work for quite some time with headaches. After tests and medication and trips to the doctors too many to count I am maybe getting it under control. It marks the longest I have been off work in my life for illness, and marks the longest time I have been home continuously since I was laid off after Wood Group.

I didn't want to be off work. I, infact, was just gathering momentum with a new role, one that energised me. Going back now is daunting and a little hard to deal with, what with the headaches still being sore and all, but I do have to do the job I am paid for at somepoint, and I have started slowly from home, catching up.

The biggest strange feeling in all this was the feeling I couldn't do anything. It wasn't a cold I could whisk away with a Lemsip, nor a bought of fatigue that could be magicked away with some rest - this was prolonged and near enough uncurable from my perspective.

The strangest thing is that being at home hasn't been the cake walk you'd imagine - I loved getting extra time with my kids and wife at home and not going to work was a gift, of course, and a nessecity, but also having them around was hard when I was literally screaming with pain at times. It's hard to explain to uyour toddler why you can't play with them when you're home.

In the gap though a few things have came into focus and in time they will end up on these pages; health, life and mindfulness are going to be big changes in the future, and along with Con and the girls (and Frank) we are going to move forward into 2017 with big strides now that the Absence is behind us, hopegfully.

]]>A&E 4Mark ShieldsMon, 20 Mar 2017 09:14:02 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/3/13/ae-4537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:58c6b47cf7e0ab656619253fObviously I have things I want to write about about Scottish Independence. Obviously. A lot has happened. But...

To stop this becoming just another Indy blog, how about I write about my recent adventures with a chronic headache, a trip to A&E in an ambulance, and a CT scan?

The story begins about two weeks ago when out of the blue my head starts to hurt. Not a usual headache either, but a hall of white light in behind my eye. It is probably the worst headache I'd ever had, but I shrugged it off thinking it would go away like most of my head aches. However, two weeks later it is still here, so that's worrying.

The next day I call the doctor to see if they could sort me out. This was fine - did a few tests on my cognition and eyesight but was told to see if anything got worse. That night, I was slurring my words and foggy, so Connie argued that it could be much worse so I spoke with the GP again and arranged for some hard core pain medication and a scan of my brainbox to confirm that I was truly mental.

The pain killers took the edge off (thanks codine) but at the weekend things took a turn for the worse, so I called the out of hours service to see if I could see the on-call GP. After a few questions they say they are sending an ambulance.

That's right - I got a trip to the West Cumberland in an ambulance for headaches. It was because they couldn't discharge me once if been seen, not being doctors, and my blood pressure was elevated. After waiting three hours alone Connie joined me with Etta and I was finally seen, to be told it was probably fine.

The next morning I was in a lot of pain again, so forced my scan through and was seen on Wednesday. CT scan are comically quick and quite painless - I was in the department for probably 2 minutes total. I'm still waiting on the results from this, however, and my headaches are still as strong.

So basically that's the story of my first brush with the NHS having to deal with a sick me, not anyone else, and I have been impressed. Obviously I'm still worried there is something more serious up with my brain, but I'm still to see the GP about the scan.

What it does remind me how much I take for granted my pain-free and illness free life for granted - I'm floored by headaches! Connie has gone through pain like it every day of her life basically, and I can't even handle a few weeks of pain. I need to start taking better care of myself and, hopefully, this isn't a life or death thing and just undiagnoseable headaches, but it still has reminded me it doesn't take much to get sick and get pulled down.

]]>Adventures in Hire Cars - TechnologyMark ShieldsMon, 20 Feb 2017 10:30:44 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/2/20/adventures-in-hire-cars-technology537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:58aac02c893fc06cb72052a1After driving in the past few months more cars that I had in the past few years, and buying a new car last year, it has become quite clear that there has been a massive step change in the technology that a car has on the inside, some of which is quite impressive, but other less so. I thought it interesting to discuss the ones that have made an impression.

Autonomous DrivingWe are quite a bit away from the autonomous driving future that the big car companies are look at, but I can see a few steps here and there on the way to that destination. Connie and I are ddivided ivived over this = she doesn't think a car will ever be able to safely drive itself. I'm more positive that it'll happen at somepoint and almost believe that Joni and Etta may live in a world where buses and trucks drive themselves, but the humble private car might be a while away.

I was thinking about this when drving two cars - the Infiniti Q30 and my most recent hire, the Kia Sportage (the 308 died, but that's a different story). These cars had bits of technology in them that appeared to be beta tests for some features that an autonomous car needs. The first in sign recognition - both cars "read" road signs, pulling speed limits out off signs and putting them onto the dashboard. It's not like the old way of doing it - taking it from the classicification of the road, but they "see" the signs - noted by the fact that they picked up the temporary speed limits on the roadworks on the M6, and the 10 mph in the office car park.

The second is the impressive feature of the Kia to do "Active Lane Keep Assist", which basically means it'll keep the car between the two white lines of the road on it's own. I tried this out along with the cruise control and the car basically was, for a few seconds, "driving" it's self. I mean, it'd lose the lane every so often, and it would also not see any other cars (other bits of kit do that, that being said) but it was impressive just how well it worked.

Auto-stop/start and Gliding modeThe recent raft of emissions rules that the EU have put out has challenged car makers to make changes to their eingines, and these two features are designed to help with that. The car stopping it's engine when stationary is not new - in fact, I vivildy remember a demonstration of this technology on Blue Peter on a Nissan Micra back in the early 1990s before it has become the staple of today. I do wonder if sparking the engine up after one second of being off whilst at a giveway makes any sense, but the engine does it fine in most cars.

The other is a Mercedes Benz feature I liked - when driving, if you took your foot off the accelerator it'd enter Gliding Mode, which would slip the car out of drive and into the nuetral coasting feature. it was really impressive when it engaged it, and the slip back into drive was perfectly seamless, but it did feel weird on hills when the lack of engine braking (the turn over of the engine actually slows the car down when there is no power) and you had to pay attention that you weren't speeding up too much.

Keyless EntryThe dogshit 500X has this, but as soon as I got used to it, I missed it from my normal life. It was fun just walking away from the car knowing it'd lock and open when I approached it. The best moment was when I realised that I'd left the keys in the office, but the car was parked under my window, so I could open it even without the keys being on me. That was quickly replaced by the horror that anyone could enter my car and start it and maytbe drive it away just because I was sitting in my office close enough to it. Wierd.

TouchscreensOur Yeti has a resistive touchscreen - one that recognises the input from the pressure, not like your smartphone. That's not amazing for a car, as it requires your eyes to leave the road. In fact, almost all touchscreens do, which is why the Peugeot 308's buttonless dash was fancy, but it just meant to change anything I was looking away from the road. The biggest issue with the touchscreens is a slow response. The Insignia's touchscreen was fast, but the 500X's was like treacle. It is very noticable when driving when there's a delay in switching on the radio.

Auto... everything elseAutomatic lights, windscreen wipers, parking cameras, automatic full beams (I really like this), automatic beeps when you leave lanes without signalling... cars are mountains of tech. These are all pretty neat features, but all feel like the small baby steps towards cars becoming random pointless things we don't need to own.

That's righlt; I'm of the school of thought that Joni and Etta will not own cars, but own memberships to car clubs that means when they need to drive you tap your smart[whatever they invent] and a car appears, takes you there, and then disappears. The idea of ownership is going to change.

And no one will die in a car. That's the key; Connie feels like cars driven by people are safer than auto-driving cars, but that's not only not ture, it's demonstrably not true. Hundreds of people die around the world on roads every single day, if not every hour, and the next generation will look back as say "Dad, you actually drove your cars... yourself? At 70mph!? That's insane! And, wait, they didn't automatically link up and avoid each other? That's just mental!" in the same way we laugh today about those people who walked out in front of the first cars with red flags, or when our parents used to drive around in cars without seatbelts, or when I was a kid and cars didn't have crumple zones, air bags, or ABS.

It's a matter of time.

]]>2014 (Again)Mark ShieldsFri, 17 Feb 2017 10:01:33 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/2/17/2014-again537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:58a6c2162e69cf8d46901886In 2016 the Scottish elections were held with a raft of manifesto pledges within them, one key one in the SNP's being the following:

"We believe that the Scottish Parliament should have the right to hold another referendum if there is clear and sustained evidence that independence has become the preferred option of a majority of the Scottish people – or if there is a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will."

In my three post series in 2014 about my voting intentions, I wrote If It Is a No in which I stated a simple fact: "...and then things will start all over again. Those who wanted better control for Scotland will still want better control. Those who wanted better powers will still want better powers. Those who wanted a fairer government will still want a fairer government. So it won't stop - the framing will have just changed slightly" and "The question might have been answered, but the topic is still up for discussion".

That attitude rightly pissed a lot of people off. There had been a narrow escape for those who supported the Union and they were relieved, only to find out that those who were arguing against them were still as angry and ready to put their case forward. Why? The question had been asswered! It was a No, come on everyone, let's knuckle down. The thing is that it is a belief. I believe that Scotland will serve itself better outside of the UK and on it's own, and with a slight majority of folk disagreeing with me isn't going to change that. Is that a blind bit of faith? I don't know - I am sure that I could have been convinced if the actions of the UK government had been more "equal" than dismissive following almost everything that happened from 19th of September 2014 to... the 17th February 2017.

Now, however, the question is quite different. We know that the question asked in 2014 isn't valid anymore and the contextual basis for the question was entirely wiped out when the UK government lost the EU Referendum vote. Now, I respect that vote. I live in the England, don't forget, so my fellow country-persons voted against me and went to leave. In fact, the area I live in voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU. That feeling of having lost against was hard to take, but that's not what I'm aruguing - Brexit is happening to England no matter what, it is the terms of the arrangement that is up for debate there.

Scotland, on the other hand, has no say. They voted to Remain and they're getting taken out of the EU without their consent. That's a disaster scenario for those who voted No but also voted Remain. It's the hard choice of British nationalism versus outward global reach. No longer is the Scottish Independence vote the rejection of collaboration that many painted it as in 2014. In fact, it is the exact opposite scenario now, a Yes vote being for a EU membership, not the other way round.

So no matter who says it, when they say it, or when they believe it, this is not a re-run of 2014. It isn't for a lot of reasons.

Scotland voted to Remain, and is being taken out without it's consent.

That's actually true, even if you say it's a UK decision - the Scottish Parliament says no overwhelmingly, yet it being disregarded. That's not a partnership of equals.

The previous IndyRef was on the basis that a No guaranteedEU membership. Now, it's guaranteeing an EU exit.

The powers promised have been watered down.

Scotland is being ignored in a magnitude that hasn't happened in decades.

So the next step - convincing those who voted Yes but are now a No, or those who voted No but might change to a Yes.

]]>Adventures in Hire CarsMark ShieldsThu, 16 Feb 2017 21:43:26 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/2/10/adventures-in-hire-cars537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:589d9f08b8a79b03810ec592Quite a few years ago now I wrote about the hire cars that I had used during my time in North America. It felt like a fun thing to do, seeing as I'd managed to squeeze in a raft of models in a short space of time. Long time reader Jonathan (and precursor to this very blog) noted that he was glad I hadn't reviewed his car.

I have a new role within work, and it's meaning a lot more travel than any other time in my working life. This is a good thing - the new role, the subject of which is coming up in a coming post, is interesting, but the travel can be tiresome. I'm trying to get it all out of the way at the start, so I can move to a more remote role.

Because of the location of my house and the office transport links are woeful. Last year I took the train to the head office and it was a long and difficult journey with three trains on the way down (of which I missed them all due to a late first train of the morning) and then on the way back it was busy and didn't get a seat. Then there's problem that the train station it's self is a 25 minute drive away. Instead, hiring a car is quicker, more cost efficient, and is far more felexible.

There have been a lot of cars since. Recently, loads of them. Let's try and begin with the last ones I remember. I'm excluding all of the Canada hires - the VW Passat, Kia Optima, Ford Escape, Buick Verano, VW Jetta. Actually, let's indulge one Canada hire.

Heh.

Dodge RAM 1500As usual with weddings Connie and I's went a little pear shaped a few times along the way to a successful series of nuptials. One was the day that everyone was getting into town for the wedding our hire car wasn't returned to the place it was supposed to, in time for us to obtain it. We were due to do some running, meeting friends and later family. Dan, the manager of the branch of Enterprise, who has become a close friend with all the coin we drop anytime we go home, has always done me solids - giving me a choice of car, upgrading almost everytime - this time, he gave us a loan of the Ram 1500 truck for the day until our car arrived, for free, free of gas usage too. It was fun having my friends rocking up in a big truck.

Seat Exeo estateThis one car was nice enough, and I used it to go across the country on a camping weekend, but it really made us want a large estate car, which lead us to getting the Passat. In turn, this meant that my UK hiring days were over until 2016. It was a nice car if a bit dated, but the loading space was impressive.

Vauxhall AstraBack in July 2015, whilst the world around me was blowing up, someone crashed into the Passat. In order, I had a telephone interview on the Tuesday, was offered a face to face interview on the Wednesday, was made redundant on the Thursday, was crashed into on the Friday, had a hire car on the Saturday and drove to the office I now work in on the Monday, with a job offer that afternoon, and we had selected a new house by the Thursday. The insurers, who knew it was a no fault claim, told me not to drive and got me an Astra estate. It was a massive boon - we put around 1500 miles on that guy between the trips up and down to Cumbria over the two weeks our car was away, and it gave me a nice story to tell the team once I started.

Hyundai Santa FeWhen hiring a car for work they offer you an Astra as standard, but I prefer automatics so I've yet to have an Astra. The first car I got was this massive SUV and it was simply insane - one of the biggest cars I've driven but was very nice inside and was quite easy to park thanks to all the cameras. I don't know if it was a nice car, as it was pretty unwieldly despite all the assistance, but it looked smart.

Infiniti Q30I didn't know that you could get Infiniti's in the UK and when this car was dropped off I was surprised. It was until very recently the worst car I'd driven as a hire since the Chevy Spark, as it was heavy, low, dark, difficult to see out of, and generally just underpowered. It was a dark car to drive down south in, and I was happy to give it back.

Mercedes Benz C200When this showed up I was amazed - it was the smartest car I'd ever driven. I had this for two weeks to so it wasn't a quick hire. It was amazing on the motorway and went like the clappers when you put your foot down, but as a saloon model it had a terribly unuseful boot, and there just wasn't that much space in the rear due to the bucket seats. Additionally, the infotainment system (all the media and stanav stuff) was pretty useless, controlled by a big dial and touch pad area, that even after two weeks I still didn't know how to use fully. Still, I was sad to give it back.

Vauxhall InsigniaMy dad owned an Insignia for a few years and even loaned it to us when the Passat had it's Great Brakes Failure of 2013. We also had hired an estate version at one point too. Anyway, the car was low and big and pretty boring bar two very impressive features - one, was the tank. I had it filled up before I left and travelled around 270 miles in it with barely denting a quarter of the tank. When I filled it back up the trip computer said I had 800 miles in the tank ready to go, making it perfect for pulling on the motorway. Secondly, it was the first time I'd came across Android Auto. I plugged my phone into the car to charge and it offered me an amazing series of interfaces for using Spotify, Google Play Music, Tunein Radio, Google Maps, and even read my WhatsApp messages back to me. Very impressive.

Fiat 500XHoly shit. I thought the Spark was bad, but this was just terrible. It had a tiny touchscreen, an even worse set of controls for the heating, sounded like a van under the hood, rattled on the motorway, and had no space in the front for me to find a good position to sit. And to top it all off, this was meant to be my semi-permanent car! I drove it down south and an enginer management light came on, which meant I had to trade it in. Thank christ.

Peugeot 308My sister bought a new 208 last year and I remember thinking I liked the look but it was just too small for my tastes, which means the similar but larger 308 should do the trick - and it does! It has a nice ride, great fuel economy, nice driving position, good technology built in, and has a pretty enourmous boot. There are three major draw backs though - the dash controls are non-existent, and replaced with a touch screen for everything. That's fine, but only if the screen was fast, well designed, and easy to use, all of which it isn't. There are afew neat tricks, but not enough to make up for the fact that I have to take my eyes off the road to change the temperature of the AC. The second is that it is blooming tiny in the back, with barely space for car seats never mind an adult. And thirdly, since I've got it the additive management system light has been on, something that has yet to be sorted out by the hire company.

]]>Ten: The Single Posts Worth Your AttentionMark ShieldsThu, 16 Feb 2017 12:10:29 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/2/16/ten-the-single-posts-worth-your-attention537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:58a5906f6a4963c71a84a1baBlockedMy one hit wonder. This still gets 400 hits a month even now, and has had a totaly of 250'000 unique readers since it was posted back in late 2013. Seriously; what they absolute hell. Well, at least going viral once has been checked off my to-do list, but in the end it still stands as one of my most informed and actually well structured posts.

Locked OutOf all the stories posted on here about Frank and my own personal idioacy, this one, where I tell the tale of being locked out of my car with Frank locked in the back, and having to break into my own car, still stands out as one of the best I've ever written. I still laugh about it now with Connie. A few years later I attempted a sequel, but it just didn't quite have the same level of jeopardy.

Internet IdentityI still cite this as an important policy and one that I preach to anyone who listens - no judging anyone who doesn't do it, but it's quite important and I think that it will be come far more important in the future.

The Pholly of My PhonesFor the longest time this post was the most visited place on the site. Not sure why, but I think it is an SEO orgasm of data, with pictures and stuff. I have started writing a new one, an update, but there is a fraction of the phones since that post so we will see.

Peter Devenney ShieldsWriting this post about my grandfather was a difficult thing to do. It stands as one of the best posts I've ever written, and it also stands as a testament to the man himself. There is one line that I absolutely love and I can't believe I wrote it.

But that's not the most important thing; not by a long shot. The man, from a large family, met a woman, Marion Kavanagh, from a similarly big family, and they fell in love. They married, in 1958 and gave birth to my father in 1959. He raised my father in the way that he knew, and my father later fell in love with a woman, my mother, and later, in 1985, I appeared, his first grandson. In 2010, his two eldest grandchildren would move away to America and Germany after one of them graduating from University, the other in the middle of her studies, and he would remark to my father that he couldn't believe that was possible.

]]>Ten: The Series of Posts Worth Your AttentionMark ShieldsThu, 16 Feb 2017 11:40:51 +0000http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/blog/2017/2/16/ten-the-series-of-posts-worth-your-attention537c690ee4b0682a2ca2bbad:538f19bde4b0241d3409ce69:58a5897b725e252edfa363af"Surely, someone, somewhere will read this and realise, wow, what a sack."Mark Shields, 4th February 2008.

I capped that post about the blog back then with the above phrase, which when I read it back to myself this week, made my laugh with tears. It is sad to say that my past self made my self giggle so much I almost peed a little, but one of the joys about reading my old posts back is the chronicling of things and the writing of opinions that I'd totally forgot about. Perfect examples of these lie in the Holiday posts, including ones about holidays with my ex-girlfriend, to #LadsHolidays with the #boys including stories that I'd totally forgotten about.

It is amazing to think that what was really started on a bit of a whim has lasted this long, becoming the longest single thing I’ve had in my life for years and years, charting so many ups and downs in my life, like a diary, like a time capsule, like a self-built reflection of my younger self. Of course, now at ten, there is no way that I will stop writing, but there have been good times and bad times for the blog, times where posts have came and gone. But I have posted once a month at the very least for every month that the blog has been in existence.

There are a few series of posts that stand out in my mind as ones that any reader of my history should pay attention to, so here they are.

The Tale of Chemical Engineering (Part n of 1)I started writing these posts, of which there are nine, back in 2007. It was a moment in my life where I suddenly realised that I didn't have to what I'd been aiming for for years. Did I want to be an engineer? The tales since have chronicled my ups and downs, including the change of career, chartership, disillusionment with managers, and many other things. Best place to go is to Part XI of I, and work your way back.

Uncle Frank and...Getting Frank was a big deal. A huge deal. And over the first year of his life I posted eight posts about his life. They're awesome snapshots of our life with him, before we had kids.

Life Through a Lens seriesI started posting photos that I'd taken that also chronicled my life for the first time in 2010 and it grew into three sub-series of posts - the "main" ones, the Pretentious series, and a single Frank instalment that is linked to above. There are five main instalments and three pretentious installments, all worthwhile looking at for a visual element to the blog that has been recently totally absent.

April 30 Day Music ChallengeWhen I lived in Texas I took a solid few weeks off and did a huge road trip. That never ended up on the blog, oddly, but what did was a huge planned series of posts - 30 in 30 days, each about music. It was a Facebook thing that people were doing, so I adapted it for the blog. It's an impressive read. Find them all here.

Lyrics That Seem to Make SenseI have posted lyrics on the blog for years. Ones that I love, and ones that I adore, and ones I identify with. There is too many to list, so here they all are.

In the Middle of the North SeaWhen I first started working in Aberdeen I never really thought about going offshore, then in 2008 I found myself there a lot. In the end, I gave me some great material, but also lead me to hate the offshore life, despite it single handedly paying for my student loans.

A Note About Write in for Writing's Sake: I wrote a lot of short stories for Write in for Writing's Sake, firstly for Aaron, and then for Laura, and they were mostly linked to on this site. Since Laura gave up the site, the place has vanished from the internet. One of the 2017 goals is to post every single one of them on this site (for I still have them) under a new main heading called "Writing". It's a big deal, a huge project, and one I'm going to start in March. I hope to have it sorted by the middle of the year. Then, following that, I'm going to post all my old reviews for God is in the TV Zine, and Scottish Fiction, under the same heading.